The EU Commission announced yesterday their intention to abandon the proposed new seed law regulation. This means short of a specific request from the EU Parliament for a return of the proposal, it’s unlikely to resurface. This leaves some uncertainty, but it seems likely the proposed regulation is now dead. Here is the announcement and Annex II, the so-called ‘kill list’.

The EU Commission probably now has to come up with another proposal. For the time being, it leaves the existing EU seed law directives unchanged. Since there is pressure for returning decision making to national governments, and reducing administrative burden, there is hope that a new proposal will go much further towards a straightforward repeal of existing seed laws rather than just a simple rebranding and otherwise strengthening of industry control.

Parliament

The EU Commission informally consulted the Parliament before this decision was taken. The answer back was very unclear, and did not indicate a clear preference one way or another. Some independent and informal polling of MEPs suggests quite a lot of disagreement between the different factions. The chances are it will be more of a fight to stop the proposal the next time around, and the situation will be more complicated.

Paquebot recently asked me to update the list of tomatoes he’s offering from what I posted here for him 2 years ago.

Paquebot lives in Wisconsin, USA. He’s offering hundreds of tomatoes, organized into the year grown, giving an indication of the age of the seeds. Tomato seed are normally good for about 10 years, sometimes more, so age isn’t an issue if you plant them within the next couple of years.

If you’re interested in anything here, send me an email and I’ll forward it to him.

If you grew up in America in the ’70s or ’80s, you certainly know this ad that was played on TV. Even then it was very controversial, and no one really took it seriously, but it was an important part of the mindset that led to the war on drugs. It was part of this vague, pseudo-science, that in effect was to make young people believe cigarettes were the only safe drug to use.

We’ve just had a similar ‘education campaign’ in Europe, that led to the drinking age being raised in several places, including Holland. This happened even over the objections of parents of young people, the majority of whom wanted their children to continue to be able to buy alcohol. Drinking damages the brains of young people, was the rallying call. Isn’t it time we grew up, and stopped this kind of nonsense?

It wasn’t long ago since tar and nicotine content labeling were determined misleading and removed from cigarette packaging. Not only misleading, but a powerful advertising mechanism, making addicted customers think they were buying a safer product. Now it’s time to take the next big step in consumer protection, and ban labeling of calories in food.

What is a Calorie?

A calorie is a measure of heat. Quite literally, in order to determine the amount of calories in food, the food is set alight and the amount of heat given off is measured.

Since our bodies don’t metabolize food this way, there’s no meaningful comparison that can made between calories and human health.

What do we Know About the Effect of Calories on our Health?

Some studies have shown for example a relationship between eating a lot of high calorie food and weight gain, or eating fewer calories and loosing weight. It might be that some health professional recommends some specific diet that might include a change in the number of calories.

Statistics show however that most people who try to lose weight with a low calorie diet nearly always fail in the end, and gain back even more weight. I would be very suspicious of any health professional recommending such a diet.

In any case, this weight gain or loss is not always permanent, and nothing credible can be said about it’s effect on our health. Any generalized statement on public health related to calories would not be credible, and likewise labeling foods with their calorie content is misleading to consumers.

Any public campaign that results in people eating more or fewer calories, is food company propaganda, as they strive to make ever more money off of misleading people in their perception of their own health.

How is Food Calorie Content Used?

Around the time of WWII and just before, protein was used as a measure for food and ‘food quality’. This is the major reason why meat and dairy production was so dramatically increased in the years following the war. In these years, the chicken egg was often identified as ‘the perfect food’, because it’s almost pure protein. In some Germanic languages the word for protein is the same as egg white, probably for this reason.

In the years after choosing protein as the measure of food quality, a major backlash occurred. This was primarily because by this measure a vegetarian diet was inadequate, and most of the world at the time was vegetarian or vegan. There was quite a lot of indignation as institutions such as the WHO began imposing high protein diets on the world’s population, in the name of improving public health.

We should receive current efforts to change our calorie intake with the same indignation.

After much debate, protein was eventually replaced with calories. I think most people involved in this issue don’t recognize calories as a great improvement over protein, only that it no longer stigmatizes a vegetarian diet.

After choosing calorie, it became clear this measure also had it’s flaws. Different people and cultures react differently on a diet with a fixed numbers of calories. It depends a lot on how active you are, as well as your age, sex and genetic factors. They ‘fixed’ this problem by creating various charts, and acceptable calorie ranges, instead of trying to work from a single number.

There’s really nothing any more that can be said about diets being healthy according to calories than there was with protein, only no one has a better idea at the moment of a another measure to use.

Here’s another post not very related to seeds and gardening. It’s also somewhat specific to the Netherlands, but I think it’s a useful thing to be in English, because there are expats who may read this. Those of you who live other places may have similar websites.

Marktplats.nl is a website owned by Ebay, and primarily a place where you can put up free classified ads to buy and sell second hand things, either for a fixed price or auction. It used to be an independent site, but got bought early on by Ebay. It’s sort of a mini Dutch language Ebay, with things specific to the Netherlands. As well as classified ads, it’s possible to leave reviews, giving your opinions on the merchants. As well as free ads, there are various paid options, like better placement or the ability to mention an external website. It’s very popular here, or at least used to be.

I regularly read comments on the Internet of people who try to use free ads. They say they end up placed on page 9 or something, completely unfindable. People also complain that as soon as you sign up and give them your email address, they flood you with spam, and you can never get them to stop. It’s pretty clear, maybe logical, that they really only care about their customers who place paid ads.

It’s also not as safe a site as you might think. It was in the news recently, that someone was arrested for pretending to sell tickets to events, but then just taking people’s money. He ripped off more than 200 people before he was stopped, which is a lot of people for a country as small as the Netherlands. You might wonder why on a site where you can leave comments about merchants, so many people would get ripped off. The way it should work, is people should be able to leave reviews and ratings, and honest people should build up their own reputation. Dishonest people should have a hard time getting established.

Well I just got ripped off using Marktplaats the other day, and in the process I learned something important about how it works.

I don’t usually use Marktplaats to buy and sell stuff, rather I look for services. In this case, I was looking for a plumber. I choose a plumber who had been on Marktplaats for 7 years or something silly like that, and only had positive reviews, all of them spread out one or two at a time, over the entire 7 years. The name on the ad was ‘Daniel’, and only a mobile phone number and email address was given for contact information. I also chose him based on geographic location, an option in the site’s search engine, because I only wanted to work with someone based nearby.

As it turned out, he had paid for multiple listings in multiple locations, and actually came from out of town. Not only did he have multiple locations for the name ‘Daniel’, but I was able to see later that he also had multiple listings under other names. When he showed up at my house, he wore a sort of uniform with the name AKC-Loodgieters, and there is a website with this name.

After getting ripped off by him, I went to Marktplaats to leave a negative review. I created a new account using a disposable email address, clicked away their terms and conditions, and left my review which appeared instantly. It was a pretty straight forward review, saying I was ripped off, explaining how and why, and advising others to choose another plumber.

A few hours later, my review was removed and my newly created account was blocked. I seem to have been banned from Marktplaats for leaving a negative review! I started researching their terms and conditions, to see what I may have violated. I found this: “Mag geen scheld- of kwetsende woorden bevatten”, which says reviews cannot contain swearing or ‘hurtful’ words. It says if you violate these rules and are banned, you can contact their helpdesk and ask to be reinstated.

It’s now been 3 days since I sent a message to their helpdesk asking the reason my review was removed, and they haven’t answered They seem much more interested in removing negative reviews then they are at helping you leave a negative review that satisfies their criteria as acceptable, and doesn’t contain any ‘hurtful’ words. It would of course been no problem if I had created 3 or 4 new accounts with disposable email addresses, and left multiple positive reviews.

It’s now very clear to me how someone was able to cheat more than 200 people before being stopped by the police. It’s much easier to file a police report than place a negative review!